"I should ask to be your companion—or, if not, your bailiff!" said the Prince-Bishop promptly.
"That would be to forget your holy office!"
A certain gentle sadness passed over the features of the young man.
"I leave many things undone for the sake of mine office," he said; "but the canons of the Church do not forbid poverty, or yet manual labour."
"But you have told me a hundred times," urged Joan, smiling in spite of herself, "that necessity and not choice made you a Churchman. Does that necessity no longer exist?"
"Nay," answered Conrad readily as before; "but smaller necessities yield to greater?"
"And the greater?"
"Why," he answered, "what say you to the tempest that drove me hither—the thews and stout hearts of Werner von Orseln and his men, not to speak of Captains Boris and Jorian there? Are they not sufficient reasons for my remaining here?"
He paused as if he had more to say.
"Well?" said Joan, and waited for him to continue.